Packaging equipment



June 16, 1953 A. M. DONOFRIO PACKAGING EQUIPMENT 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Dec. 4, 1946 fif/dwda- Doha/2Z0 June 16, 1953 A, DQNOFRIQ 2,641,881

I PACKAGING EQUIPMENT Filed D66. 4, 1946 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 I. 58 (f e m p/m M Dohaflz'd Patented June 16, 1953 Alfonso M. Donofrio, Toledo, Ohio, assignon'by mesne assignments, to McKay-Davis chemica'l Corporation, Toledo, Ohio, a corporationiof Ohio ApplioationDecember 4, 1946, Serial'No; 113,861

Thisinvention relates toequipment for forming packages from sheet packaging -material which is. shaped and sealed around units of the commodity to be packaged in a continuous opertheir release from a bulk supply into means-which guides the units into position to beimmediatelyenveloped by the packaging material, such as cellophane or thelike, which is then sealed about the units The principal object of the invention is to provide strip packaging equipment in which the units of commodity are in contact with a mini- 3 Claims. (01.53986) mum number of machine elements and are handled individually only one time, thus'reducing sharply the possibilities of contamination and the likelihood of waste.

Referring to th drawings:

Fig. .'1 isa somewhat diagrammatic view .in elevation, with parts broken away, of a machine embodying the invention which .is'designed for the packaging of units of commodity such as pills and tablets. v

Fig. 2 is a schematic plan view of a power transmission for the machine shown in Fig. '1. Fig. 3 is a plan view, on a larger scale, of commodity feeding mechanism incorporated in the "machine shown'in Fig. 1. I

u Fig; 4 is a detail view in section taken :sub- 'stantially on .the line IV-QEV of Fig. 3; Fig.5 is aside view of'theclutch'connection drive between thegeneral transmission-shown in Fig.,2 and thecommodity feeding mechanism shown in Fig." 3, the clutchactuator being shown atone side, to avoid obscuring the clutch proper.

'6 is a plan view of the'clutchrelease in position'tp disconnect the tablet feeding transmission, i'

Fig.7 is a wiring diagram of electrical features of the machine shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 8 is a partially diagrammatic view in side elevation of a mechanism for forming and feeding packaging-material.

Fig. 9 is a fragmentary detailed view taken from the upper right side of Fig. 8.

Fig. '10 is an enlarged section view, taken on the lin XX of Fig. 8.

Fig. 11-is an enlarged "sectional view taken on theline XI -XI of Fig. 8.

r Fig. 12 is an enlarged view of the lower open end of commodity guide means.

Fig.13 is a fragmentarydetailed view of portionsof th mechanism taken from the position indicated by the line X III--XIII- of Fig. 8.

Figx14 is a fragmentary detailed view of a portion of one of the sealing rolls.

Fig. 15 is a view inelevation of a completed group of packages.

Ageneral housing I at'its work delivery side '2 carries a switch box 3 (Fig. 1). A switch 5 in the box 3 controls a motor 5 (Fig. 2) which is mounted on a pivoted deck 6. The motor 5 has a pulley 1 in which'isengaged a'belt B which also is engaged-in a pulley 9 mounted on the input shaft'of a speed reduction device Ill. The speed reductiondevice has a power output shaft on which is mounteda pulley l. A control handle I2 is mounted on the exterior of the housing I. The travel of thehandle'l2 in a counterclockwise directionis limited by a stop l3 at a point such that an associated arm I4 is carriedbeyond dead center'position for adepending link l5 extending between the arm l4 and the deck 6. Upon moving the handle l2 away from 'thesto'p l3 and to a stop 16 the weight of the motor 5 and the speed device I0 swings the deck Gdownwardly tightening a belt I! engaged with the pulley H and with a-pulley I8 which is mounted on a main drive shaft [9 (Fig.2).

The drive shaft I9'is journalled in the housing 1 with oneend protruding therefrom. A handwheel 2ll is mounted on the outer end of the shaft '19 and is adapted for manualoperation of theworking parts. A cam'Z-I, which'is pinned on thesha'ft l9, hasa raised 'sui'facewhich engages a roller22 mounted on a forked arm 23. The arm '23 hasa bifurcated lower end which loosely embraces the shaft l9 and is maintained in position by the tension of a helical spring 24 (Fig. 8)

A bevel pinion '25 onthe shaft I9 is in mesh with a similarpinionZB pinned on the lower end of a vertically extending shaft 21 (Fig. 7). On the end of the shaft 19 remote from the handwheel 20 there is fixed-a pinion 28 (Fig. 2) which is i-n mesh with an idler gear 29 in turn meshed with a gear 30 mounted on the shaft of a crimping-roll 3|. The gear 30 is in'mesh with a gear 32 for a companion crimping roll 33.

A commodity supplyhopper'34 (Fig. 1) empties into -a-chute"35 equipped'with a vibratory feeding device 36 whichis under the control of a switch 3'! mounted on the switch box 3. 1

' A control handle 33 which extends out of the housing I is connected to an arm 39 (Figs. 5 and 6) on a swinging wedge cam 40 which can be moved above an arm i4! mounted on'the vertical shaft 21. A- collar 42 is mounted by a pin 43 to slide upwardly against the resistance of a helical spring-,in an arm of asleeve 45 which is loosely journalled onzthe shaft21. Thecollar 42 normally engages the arm 4| but when the handle 38 is moved inwardly, the collar 42 rides up on the cam 40 and clears the arm 4| on its subsequent revolutions with the shaft 21. Thus, though the shaft 2'! may continue to rotate, the sleeve 45 stops; F Y

The sleeve 45 extends upwardly through a bearing 46 in the housing I and mounts on its upp end a rotatable two-armed driving element 4! of a Geneva movement, the element 41 having a pair of drive rollers 48. When the handle 38 is pulled, the wedge cam 40 is moved away from the path of the collar 42 and the spring 44 thrusts the pin 43 downwardly through the arm of the sleeve 45. The lower end of the pin 43 is then in line with the arm 4| and is picked up by the arm 4|' on the next rotation of the shaft 21. When the drive is disengaged by the operation of the cam 40 in lifting the collar 42 and pin 43, the driving element 41 is stopped with its rollers 48 clear of a radially notched follower element 49 of the Geneva movement. Upon re-engagement, the driving element 41 is rotated and its rollers 48 successively engage in notches 50 of the follower element 49, rotating the follower element 90 degrees for each rotation of the shaft 21.

A gear 5| which is pinned to the element 49 is in mesh with a ring gear 52 on the upper surface of which are cut a pair of concentric flanges 53 and 54 which form a trough. A pair of radially spaced grooves 55 are cut concentrically with the flanges 53 and 54 in the space between the flanges 53 and 54. Slots'56 (Figs. 3 and 4) are cut in the grooves 55 in radially aligned, circumferentially spaced pairs. A stationary horizontal plate 51 extends beneath and closely adjacent the ring gear 52 thus preventing any commodity from falling through the slots 56 except at a position immediately above the open upper ends of the two guide tubes 58 and 59 which extend through the plate 51 in the path of movement of the slots 56 at one of the stop positions of the gear 52. The guide tubes 58 and 59 extend vertically downwardly through a forming tube 60.

The housing I (Figs. 1 and 8) has seats 6| and 62 which provide bearings for the shafts 63 of one or more supply rolls 64 of the strip packaging material which may be, for example, a heat-sealable cellophane, 'wax paper or other relatively flexible heat-sealable sheet material. The-flat strip stock has a take off reach 65- which is kept under tension by the action of a tensioning device comprising a pin 66 which serves as an anchor for a leather strap 61 passing over the shaft 63 and held under tension by a coil 68. The'material then passes around a guide roll 69 and against the surface of a further tension control device consisting of a roller 10 mounted upon a pin H and then over a flanged directing roller 12 and beneath a further guiding roller 13. The material then passes over the upper end of a forming'device 14 which curls the lateral edges of the material inwardly around the forming tube 60 overlapping and forming a tube 15 with an overlapped centrally located portion 16. The lowermost end of the forming tube 69 is flattened and may be slightly flared (Fig. 12) so that-as the packaging material slides off the lower end of the formin tube 66 it is flattened into a generall ovaloid cross section.

The crimping rolls 3| and 33 are electrically heated through a circuit controlled by a switch 18 (Fig. '7) which is electrically connected by a slip ring connection 19 to an electric heater 8!! within the crimping roll 33 and through a similar per minute of the crimping rolls 3| and 33,480

4 slip ring connection 8| to an electric heater 82 within the crimping roll 3|. The heaters 80 and 82 are under the control of a thermostat 83 which is mounted in the roll 3| and which controls a switch 84 in circuit with the heaters.

Each of the crimping-rolls 3| and "33 is provided with two circumferentially extending, axially spaced series of pockets 85 (Figs. 8 and 14). Between successive ones of the pockets 85 are axially extending slots 86 cut through circumferentially extending corrugations 81 which cover the peripheries of the crimping rolls between successive ones of the pockets 85 and between adjacent series of the pockets 85. The corrugations 81 cover the entire peripheries of the rolls 3| except for the slots 86 and the pockets 85. The slots ma be provided with blades 88 which may be placed selectively therein and which are shown as being in position in every third one of the slots 86. Means 89 (Fig. 2) are provided for holding the two crimping rolls 3| and 33 against each other with their corrugations interineshed and with-the coacting pairs of pockets on the two rolls in registry.

Packages 9| are formed by the'action of the crimping rolls 3| and 33 drawing the tube shaped packaging material 15 off the lower end of the forming tube 60. The blades 88 pinch the packaging material transversely as indicated by the reference character 90 in Fig. 15 in order to facilitate a separation of groups of individual commodity containing envelopes corresponding to the pairs of coacting pockets 85.

The package 9| in its finally formed condition has a longitudinally extending corrugated area 92 which crimps and seals the overlap 16 as a seam and serves as a center partition between ad-, jacent individual envelopes of the package. Transversely extending crimped and sealed areas 93 extend between successive envelopes of an individual package 9| and end seals 94, which are similar thereto, close the ends of the envelopes adjacent the pinched areas 99. The continuous rotation of the crimping rollers 9| and 93 causes a continuous steady pull upon the flattened tube of packaging material 64 and, consequently, a. continuous production of adjacent pairs of.individually sealed envelopes. This tension created by the continuously rotating crimping rolls 3| and 33 serves both to pull the packaging material off the forming roll 60 and to unroll it from its stock roller. The machine illustrated in the drawings is so geared that at twenty revolutions individual envelopes are formed, making 80 individual packages each having six envelopes.

Individual units of commodity are supplied from the supply hopper 34 as needed by operation of the vibratory feeder 36 and are freed of-dust and broken particles by a blast of air'enterin from a duct 96 through a port 91 cut in a stationary cover plate 98 which extends 'over the top 01 the flanged and grooved ring gear 52. The plate 98 is held stationaryby a knurled thumb screw 99 secured to a stationary center piece I00 concentric with the gear52. In the embodiment of the invention shown in the drawings, the-commodity supply is indicated as being in the form of tablets |0| which tumble from the end of the chute 35 through an opening|62 in the plate 98 and fall upon the surface of the ring gear-52 in the trough between its flanges 53 and 54. Several radially extending arms I93 are mounted on the center piece 100 and support brushes I84, the bristles ofwhich extend downwardly and Wipe along the surface of that-rough between the flanges '53- and 54 to Wipe the tablets :into the grooves 55 so that they will lodge in the slots v56.

In order to preventdoubling mo or the tablets 1 in the slots '56, 'a stationary arm 105,1also secured to the centerpiece I00, has astiff scraper 1'06 which ridesthe bottom of the 'trough between the fla-nges 53 and 54 and'is located just ahead of the open upper ends of the-tablet guide tubes 58 and 59 (Fig. 3). The blast of air 'serves 'to clean away dust and particles-of broken tablets and the scraper Hi6 effectively prevents more than one tablet from lodging in 'any one of the slots 56 so that only'on'e tablet at a time isreleased 'into the open upper end of one of the guidetubes B or 59-as the case m'igl'it be. *As shown in Fig. 12 the guide tubes- SB and 59 may be bent in order to slow up the descent of the tablets Iill therethrough tothelower open'out- ,let ports [EDT and I08 respectively of the two 56 each of which contains a tablet I'Ol arrives in position ab ove the open upper ends of the commodity guidetubes 58-and"59 just subsequent to r packaging material, the bifurcated arm 23 (Fig.

8) is equipped with a head I l l on which is mounted a downwardly extending pair of spring fingers H2. The spring fingers H2 are spaced to correspond with the axial spacing of the series of pockets 85 and are located immediately beneath the ports i0! and I08. The rotation of the cam 2! is so synchronized with the crimping rollers 31 and 33 and with the operation of the Geneva movement, that the fingers I I2 are forced against the exterior of the packaging material immediately after the passage therethrough of a pair of tablets ifil. The arm 23 is supported from a pivot H3 by a rod H4. The thrust created by the raised surface of the cam 2| thus crowds the two opposed layers of packaging material toward each other above each pair of tablets llll tending thus to urge the tablets downwardly and thus to clear them from the following edges of the pockets 85 and to prevent their being crushed between the corrugations 8'! which form the succeeding ones of the transverse sealed areas 93. Although this crowding in of the packaging material layers also tends to close the packaging material beneath the lower ports lfll and I08 this closing action, of course, hasn'o efiect upon g the operation of the device because succeeding tablets ml are not released into the open upper end of the commodity guide tubes 58 and 59 until after thenext transverse crimped area 93 has been formed by which time, of course, the tenguide tubes. v

sion spring 24 has withdrawn the arm 23 and its fingers "I I2 from any-contact with the packaging imaterial. .By virtue of the fact that the fingers H2 act to-crowd the tablets downwardly from the exterior of the packaging material, the only handling of the tablets'which occurs takes place within the tablet selection device comprising, the intermittently rotated ring gear '52 and itsassociated mechanism; Once the tablets have been wiped into the slots 56, which invariably occurs well prior to their arriving over the open upper ends of the commodity guide tubes 58 and 59, the subsequent operation in handling the tablets lfil depends solely upon timing of the mechanism parts and the action of gravity dropping'the tablets down the commodity As illustratedin Fig. l the continuous strip of completed packages 9| may fall upon a conveyor belt H5 and be carried thereby up a riser H6 to a table I ll along the sides of which workers may be stationed to separate the individualpackages of six envelopes (under the circumstances shown) into groups of packages for assembly into cartons or boxes. A' switch 118 may be provided to control a motor H9 which drives the conveyor H5 through a transmission i2!) at a speed preferably slightly in advance of the lineal speed of the continuous strip 'of'packages 9|.-

What is claimed and it is desired to secure by Lett'ersPatent is: V l

1. A machine for producing continuous strip packages comprising, in combination, a pair of coacting, heated, sealing rollers, each of said rollers having at least one peripherally extending series of spaced pockets and peripheralcrimping areas between adjacent edges of said pockets, a power source for rotating said rollers with their peripheries in engagement and the pockets in registry, means for feeding a continuous supply of heat-scalable sheet packaging material in opposed spaced layers into the converging'space between said rollers, a vertically extending commodity delivery tube for each of said series of pockets, said tube having an open upper end and a flattened open lower end, the lower end of said tube extending between the opposed layers of said packaging material in the converging space between said rollers and in line with the associated series of pockets, means for releasing units of commodity into the open upper end of said delivery tube at. spaced intervals of time in synchronism with the rotation of said rollers whereby each unit of commodity is delivered by said tube into the space between such layers of packaging material in registrywith a pair of pockets, intermittently operated means exteriorly of said packaging material for crowding each unit of commodity downwardly snugly between such layers of'packaging material and away from the edges of the pockets, and power transmission means between said power source, said commodity releasing means and said intermittent means for synchronous driving thereof.

2. A machine for producingcontinuous strip packages comprising, in combination, a pair of coacting heated sealing rollers, each of said rollers having at least one peripherally extending series of spaced pockets and crimping areas extending axially between successive pockets and circumferentially there-adjacent means for rotatably mounting said rollers with their peripheries in engagement with the crimping areas thereon'and pockets therein being, respectively, in registry, means-for feeding a continuous supply of heat-sealable sheet packaging material in opposed spaced layers into the converging space between said rollers, a vertically extending commodity delivery tube for each of said series of pockets, said tube having an open upper end and a flattened open lower end,,the lower end of said tube extending between the opposed layers of said packaging material in the converging space between said rollers and in line with the associated series of pockets, means for releasing units of commodity into the open upper end of said delivery tube at spaced intervals of time in synchronism with the rotation of said rollers whereby each unit of commodity is delivered by said tube into the space between such layers of packaging material in registry with a pair of pockets immediately subsequent to the engagement of the preceding axial crimping areas, intermittently operated means located exteriorly of said packaging material and having portions movable against the exterior of said material for crowding the opposed spaced layers thereof together for urging the units of commodity downwardly away from the following edges of the associated pockets, a power source and transmission means between said power source, said rollers, said commodity releasing means and said intermittently operated means for synchronous driving thereof.

3. A machine for producing continuous strip packages comprising, in combination, a pair of coacting heated sealing rollers, each of said rollers having a plurality of axially spaced, peripherally extending, series of spaced pockets and crimping areas extending axially between successive pockets and circumferentially between said axially spaced series of pockets, means for rotatably mounting said rollers with their peripheries in engagement with the crimping areas thereon and pockets therein being, respectively, in registry, means for feeding a continuous supply of heatsealable sheet packaging material in opposed spaced layers into the converging space between said rollers, a vertically extending commodity delivery tube for each of said series of pockets, said tube having an open upper end and a flattened open lower end, the lower end of said tube extending between the opposed layers of said packaging material in the converging space between said rollers and in line with the associated series of pockets, means for simultaneously releasing units of commodity into the open upper ends of said delivery tubes at spaced intervals of time in synchronism with the rotation of said rollers whereby each unit of comodity is delivered by said'tube into the space between such layers of packaging material in registry with an associated pair of pockets immediately subsequent to the engagement of the preceding axial crimping areas, intermittently operated means located exteriorly of said packaging material and having portions movable against the exterior of said material for crowding the opposed spaced layers thereof together for urging the units of commodity downwardly away from the following edges of the associated pockets, a power source and transmission means between said power source, said rollers, said commodity releasing means and said intermittently operated means for synchronous driving thereof.

ALFONSO M. DONOFRIO.

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